


Meeting Laura

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [23]
Category: CSI
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-03
Updated: 2011-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-19 18:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She vowed to never let him meet her mother. She never expected he’d change the rules.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meeting Laura

_**Fanfic: Meeting Laura**_  
 **Title:** Meeting Laura  
 **Author:** [](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/profile)[**vegawriters**](http://vegawriters.livejournal.com/)  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Grissom/Sara  
 **Timeframe:** Between the 9th and 10th seasons.  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **A/N:** This takes place in my [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies) universe and references the fanon of that world.  
 **Disclaimer:** Hey, CBS, this all belongs to you. But I’m applying for that ABC fellowship this year and my spec script is for CSI and if you want to hire me, I wouldn’t complain.

 **Summary:** _She vowed to never let him meet her mother. She never expected he’d change the rules._

There are things Gil Grissom knows.

He knows that when Sara Sidle was eight years old, her mother held her hand over a hot stove until the skin blistered. He knows that when she was ten, her father came home drunk and beat her so brutally with his belt that she didn’t go to school for two weeks. He knows that when she was twelve, she watched her mother murder her father.

He appreciates the deeply twisted sense of universal irony Sara lives with day in and day out – that for as terrifying as her father’s tempers had been, it was her mother she’d truly feared. Her father drank and when he was aware enough, he slapped her around. Her mother muttered about god and voices and would disappear for days at a time, leaving Sara to run the Bed and Breakfast. But her father’s moods had been predictable. Her mother’s uncertain and terrifying.

He knows that it took almost twenty years to for her to find a way to speak the truth of what happened to another person. That day, he’d barely been able to mask his horror. He’d clenched her hands and held her on his lap, like he used to, back in San Francisco. He’d kissed her but refused to take advantage of her in her vulnerability, unsure if it was her or himself who truly needed the comforting.

She vowed to never let him meet her mother. She never expected he’d change the rules.

They are back in the states for just a few moments, a week before the last trek down to Costa Rica before he takes the position at the Sorbonne. Already they are fretting. The money is good; research is expensive and the economy is crap. Sara needs to work and there are no jobs for her in France.

They will deal with that when they get there.

Right now, there is something else to face. Something he needs to face. She does not understand, he knows. But he needs to see this woman who is so much a part of who his wife became. Sara is frightened that it will frighten him away, but she has complied with his request with a complacency that worries him.

The group home is comfortable and airy; a converted home on the beach, staffed by devoted nurses and underpaid aides. It houses five women, all with criminal histories, all deemed incompetent to stand trial because of their mental illnesses. Four of them talk to themselves as they roam the sand around the home. One sits on a rocker and holds a doll with brown hair and brown eyes.

Grissom feels he is always learning new things about his wife, but it is not until he stands at the base of the steps, staring at Laura Sidle, that he has even a glimmer of understanding of Sara’s past. Her mother rocks a baby doll and Grissom sees his wife in the doll, sees her as a child, crouched under beds and behind doors, waiting for the pain to end.

She squeezes his hand and leads him up the stairs and he learns something new about the strength she possesses in her long, thin fingers.

“Mom?”

Her voice is childlike. Scared. He knows when Sara was thirteen, she went to visit her mother in the state institution and that she fled the room and spent the day vomiting and crying. He knows that when Sara fled Vegas only a couple of years ago, she spent time with her mother, trying to reconcile the ghosts of her memories with the truth. It was painful. There was no Lifetime Movie reconciliation or swelling of violins as mother and daughter came to terms with the past. There are days Laura is lucid. Most days she is not.

“Mom, it’s Sara.”

Laura looks up and tilts her head and Grissom holds his breath. If Laura does not recognize her daughter, it will be a long day.

“Sara.” The voice is sad and empty. “Sara.” She stares at her doll and then her daughter. “Sara.”

“Yes, Mom.” Sara kneels down, a gentle hand covering her mother’s. “I brought someone I want you to meet.”

Laura’s eyes trail from her daughter to Grissom. She starts to shift back and forth and her free hand tugs at what is left of her hair.

“Mom, this is my husband. Gil.”

The word husband elicits a response from the broken woman. Her eyes flash, a look Grissom has seen in Sara many times before, and she fixes a blank, dark stare on him. For a moment, a heartbeat, she is a mother, cautious and concerned. She wants to make sure her daughter is healthy and happy. But it passes and she shakes her head and tendrils of gray hair fly around her face. Laura clutches the doll and rocks back and forth.

“No husband no hurt bad drinking. Not ready. Too young. He is old. Advantage. No.”

“Mom.” Sara is patient and Gil blinks, realizing he is crying. This is the world his wife came from. There was no reassurance or laughter or comfort giving when Sara was attacked and raped at the age of fifteen. No mother to wrap her in her arms and soothe her nightmares. “Mom, yes. My husband. I’m married. He is a good man.”

“Drinking. Drinking bad. No. Drinking stops the soul. Opens mind. They come in. Come and talk and pick and talk.” Laura rocks back and forth, clutching the doll to her chest.

Her shoulders slumped, Sara steps back into his personal space and Grissom slips a supportive arm around her waist. “I had a feeling this would happen.” Her voice is soft, accepting of the situation. “She’s pretty well broken, Gil.”

“I’m amazed you survived. Sara … I really … had no idea.”

“She wasn’t this bad all the time when I was a kid. I think killing my father broke her, you know.” Sara sighs and shrugs and Grissom sees in her the same little girl who would skip school to make sure the Bed and Breakfast was running smoothly. The little girl who patched holes in the walls and made sure dinner was on the table. “Foster care. The best and worst thing to happen to me.” She stares at her mother for a long time and Grissom knows she is thinking of the child Sara had when she was still a child herself. “She won’t notice if we leave.”

He is embarrassed to discover he is relieved at her statement. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Sara turns and walks away and Grissom lingers a moment to look at the woman who is rocking her doll and pulling at her hair.

The ride back to the hotel is silent. Sara stares out the window of the rental car, her hands in her lap. She does not pull away when he links their fingers. He stops to pick up dinner, but Sara pushes the food away when they return to the room. She disappears into the bathroom and he hears the shower run and knows to give her the space she needs to cry. If he tries to talk to her before she is ready, she will retreat into herself and there is no chance to get her back after that. Their time apart had taught Sara how she best dealt with her feelings and taught him how to connect to her.

She emerges half an hour later, dressed in gray LVPD sweats and a Harvard t-shirt. Her hair hangs in wet ringlets around her face and her eyes are red and puffy. But when she smiles, there is a gentle light in her eyes and she even picks up a spring roll and nibbles at it. He gently pulls her onto his lap and she snuggles and he takes comfort in the beat of her heart.

“Gil …”

“Yes?” He runs his hand down her back and up under her shirt, tracing the lines of the tattoos he’s known by heart since their first night together.

“I’m sorry you had to see that today. I just … I had hoped she’d be lucid.”

“Sara …”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

It is a dumb question, he knows. Too easy for her to back away and tell him she is fine or for her to take it the wrong way and wonder if he’s wondering if she too could snap any moment. But she surprises him.

“Not really. But I will be. It’s where I come from, you know. I can’t be ashamed of it. It’s who I am.”

“No.” He kisses her shoulder because it is easy to reach. “You are more than the history that was written for you.”

“Thank you.” She sighs and he feels the hitch in her breath. He knows she is thinking about the daughter she gave up and the dream life she never had. He knows she is thinking about children they might or might not have. He knows she is thinking of her brother and her father and the men in her life, including him, who have hurt her. But her arms are around him and he clings to her.

She is more than the sum of her past. When she smiles, it touches her eyes. When she is fascinated by a research project, she is like a pit bull with a cat in its teeth. She’s made him (almost) a vegetarian. She enjoys nothing more than curling up with a mug of tea while he reads aloud from whatever book they are working through together. He knows that marrying her was the smartest thing he’s ever done.

“So … France …”

“I know it isn’t what you really wanted.”

“I’m with you, Gil. We’ll figure out the rest later, okay?”

“Okay.” He runs his fingers through her hair, suddenly wanting to get her naked and under him. Wanting her to forget about her birth control pills and for them to bring a child into the world that is the best of both of them. Wanting to spend the rest of their lives in this moment, right here.

But she turns and kisses him and he picks her up, forgetting about food and France and early morning planes to catch. Right now it is just the two of them, living in the present. The past can wait.

_~fin~_


End file.
